Parenting in Sussex: Loud children and having a clear-out

And not only that, when you add more children into the mix, why doesn't it proportionally raise the sound level? Instead, the addition of a couple of kids amplifies it about tenfold.

I say this because to celebrate my daughter’s birthday, she had a few friends round to our house. It was all good-natured fun, but wow, they sure do make a lot of noise when they get excited. There was jumping and thumping on the floor upstairs, screeching, running around the garden and one of them even found and then used a whistle at one point!

It was a tiny bit crazy, but my daughter loved every minute, so it was all good with me.

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It was the first year we’ve not held a proper party for her, instead opting for me to drive said rabble to Flip Out trampoline park in Chichester for a bit of a bounce-around, followed by a takeaway back at our house.

It felt more grown-up, and reminded me of a similar thing I did when I was 11. I took a couple of friends onto the Palace Pier and we rode rides and went out for food afterwards.

Then, like now with my daughter, it was a real shift from being a little kid to being a pre-teen. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel ready for my children to grow up (does anyone?!) but these little milestones really do highlight how fast the years pass.

One minute you’re organising an early-afternoon first birthday tea party for family only, the next there are requests for bubble tea, face masks, 9pm pick-ups and minimal interference from parents!

I’ve heard people say of the difficult baby years ‘the days are long, but the years are short’ as a way to help parents feeling at the end of their tether with sleepless nights and colic.

It might be a cliché, but when you feel like you still have a baby but are actually staring down the start of secondary school, you realise it’s pretty darn true.

I guess the only thing that hasn’t changed is the decibel level, because they sure know how to make their presence heard at any age!

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Once the birthday fun was over, it was straight into tidy-up mode. We’re going to be getting some work done on our house, and so we needed to initiate a clear-out. The problem is, it’s never that simple. Unearthing a box of stuff you haven’t seen for years is a sure-fire way to lose an afternoon as you reminisce over old photos, old school reports, the favourite teddy from your childhood and more.

Just because you have unearthed said box from its dusty cupboard does not mean the job is done. In fact it’s just beginning as you have to sift through all that memorabilia, decide what’s important and what you can bear to lose.

For someone as sentimental as me, it’s hard. Sure, until this moment I hadn’t remembered I’d kept all the baby shoes my daughter wore for the first few years of her life. But now that I’ve found them, I don’t want to part with them. I don’t think I want to be a ruthless person (watching Charlotte during the final of The Traitors confirmed that for me!) but if you’re that way inclined it must make life so much easier when you’re having a clear-out.

On that note, I’d better get back to it. The box of DVDs circa 2007 isn’t going to sort itself… Wish me luck!